Shots in the Dark

Today is Class Day at Harvard—congratulations, seniors—and the Crimson celebrates by publishing another of its cranky attacks on the faculty.

The paper editorializes….

The Faculty has addressed few of the critical problems facing undergraduate education in any meaningful way, including those of curricular reform and the need for better teaching. Instead, it spent much of the year focusing on the ouster of University President Lawrence H. Summers—the most undergraduate-friendly Harvard president in recent history—while at other times it had difficulty even attaining quorums at its meetings to discuss undergraduate matters.

The editorial goes on to excoriate the faculty primarily for failing to make sufficient progress on the curricular review while devoting its energy to ousting Summers.

I know the Crimson is staffed with smart people, so I’m mystified by this argument. Can the Crimson editors not see any connection between the leadership of President Summers and the disaster that is the curricular review? Do these folks have such a short memory that they forget that, while Summers was actively directing in the review, it was an even larger failure than it is now? That it was Summers who appointed Kirby, an ineffectual dean who, for various reasons, was not up to the job of leading an academically serious curricular review? That, in working to oust Summers, the faculty was doing the most undergraduate-friendly thing it could? It will be very interesting to see the state of the review after a year of Derek Bok; I have no doubt that the comparison will be instructive.

The Crimson editors often lament the state of advising at Harvard College…do they not see that the worst department is the economics department, and that because this was a core of political support for Summers, he conspicuously failed to raise this issue with that department? (You can trust that he would have if it were classics, that’s for sure.)

And do the Crimson editors not see that Summers manipulated an easily-pleased audience, mobilizing student opinion to try to shore up his support, politicizing his relationship with the student body in a way that was extremely disturbing to the faculty, which consciously resisted efforts to draw the student body into this fight?

Crimson editors, it’s a fine thing that Summers visited student pizza feeds, danced at freshman parties, urged the teaching of more seminars, and wanted to improve the student social life. His push of a plan for free tuition for low-income families was important in both symbolic and practical ways. Absolutely, give him credit for these things.

But there is an inexorable connection between a dud of a curricular review and Summers’ leadership. Then there’s the fact of FAS deficits that will be approaching $100 million annually, in large part because of Summers’ high-spending habits—and if you think this won’t affect undergraduate education, you are much mistaken. The reporting of your own staff has shown that.

The Harvard faculty certainly has its shortcomings—many of which, in my opinion, are traceable to the longstanding culture of the university—and it does not explain itself well. But on this one, the Crimson is just wrong.

The Red Sox came to the Stadium last night to try to avenge an embarrassing 13-5 defeat the night before, and thanks to my brother’s generosity, I was there, seated somewhere between Rudy Giuliani and Michael Strahan. At the start of the night, you wouldn’t say that the Sox were starting from a position of strength: Their pitcher, David Pauley, had just come up from the minors. After his first start, he had an ERA of 12.46. Meanwhile, he was facing Yankee sophomore Chien-Ming Wang, whose 4-something ERA wasn’t terrific but who has pitched well in recent starts.

What a game it was.

Wang looked shaky at first, running his pitch count to 48 after just two innings and giving up a mammoth homer to David Ortiz in the third inning. Two terrific defensive plays by first baseman Andy Phillips—both leaping grabs of rocket line drives— probably saved more runs.

Meanwhile, Pauley was just terrific, mixing speeds, changing locations, and making the Yankee hitters look like they were facing Luis Tiant rather than a rookie fresh off the farm. Only a solo home run by Bernie Williams saved the Yankees from being shut out through six.

In the bottom of the seventh, they broke through, barely. With two outs, Miguel Cairo, filling in for the injured Derek Jeter at short, hit a little dribbler that scooted under Pauley’s glove then under second baseman Mark Loretta’s hand. (The ball was generously scored a hit.) Then Johnny Damon singled and rookie Melky Cabrera, playing for injured left-fielder Hideki Matsui, walked to load the bases. After David Pauley exited—this kid has a future—Jason Giambi then walked on six pitches, forcing in what would be the winning run.

But only because of an astonishing play by Cabrera in the top of the 8th. With two out, Manny Ramirez absolutely socked a ball to deep left-center—a home run in any American League park other than Yankee Stadium (assuming it didn’t hit the Green Monster). But Cabrera, whose defense has been shaky, raced back to the wall, timed his leap perfectly, caught the ball behind the wall, and fell back onto the field with the ball in his glove. Ramirez, who was trotting between second and third at this point, stopped dead in his tracks, as amazed as was the rest of the Stadium. After that, Mariano Rivera came in for an easy ninth. (Well, he made it look easy.)

A tough loss for the Sox—worse than a blowout, I think—a great victory for the Yankees…but either way, a great showdown. Great pitching, incredible defense, rookies coming up big in clutch situations. Fantastic.

Jason Giambi batting in the bottom of the eighth;
Giambi would walk in the winning run.

In fact, the newspaper loves her so much it ran five pictures of the golfer today, including one on Page One, above the fold, as well as the rather gratuitous shot below. The Times website has a slideshow featuring another half-dozen photos of Wie.

Why? Because in her attempt to make the cut for the Masters—the top 18 finishers qualified—Wie finished…59th.

One questions the news judgment….after all, this is a story about a woman who wants to play in a golf tournament that has traditionally been for men. Michelle Wie is surely an excellent golfer. But she’s not exactly Rosa Parks.

Yesterday I received this e-mail from Citibank…..

Dear Richard Bradley:

On Friday, June 2nd you received an email regarding your Citi® / AAdvantage® MasterCard.
We recently discovered that the email we sent to you incorrectly contained the salutation
“Dear Mary Jane” rather than “Dear Richard Bradley”. We apologize for the confusion
this may have caused….

Writing in the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, Sue Carlton agrees with me: catching and killing a hammerhead shark just to set a record is pointless slaughter…. And she notes some encouraging news: In a poll on a fishing website, 61% of respondents answered that it was “never” okay to kill a shark for the purpose of setting a record. I don’t see why it isn’t, oh, 98%, but 61% is a good start.

It’s been pointed out to me that I erred on one point in my Boston Magazine article on Larry Summers’ resignation. About two-thirds of the way through the article, I wrote that Peter Ellison had been appointed dean of the graduate school by Summers.

That’s not true—it was Neil Rudenstine who appointed Ellison dean.

Not a central point of the article, but still, one hates to make any mistake, and I’m happy to correct it.

The former Boston Globe columnist and current blogger refuses to let the Andrei Shleifer scandal fade into moral vacuity, and he’s written another terrific column about the choice Harvard now faces—a choice that some members of its (former?) administration seemed determined to avoid or blur for as long as possible.

Warsh writes:

Within the university, the debate about what to do about Shleifer seems to have centered so far on the distinction between civil and criminal code.

Why worry about it if the government didn’t have enough evidence to charge him with a crime?

If this is the litmus test for one’s ability to remain a star professor on the Harvard faculty, then the university truly does believe in excellence without a soul.

How could anyone possibly read David McClintick’s article in Institutional Investor and not come away thinking that Shleifer’s behavior, whether it falls into the realm of criminal or civil law, has done enormous damage to Harvard (not to mention Russia)?

A week or so ago, I received a fatuous publication from Harvard in the mail, something called “The Yard.” After skimming through it and recognizing it as Harvard-funded agitprop, I placed it gently in the circular file next to my desk, and wondered, if only for a moment, why Harvard needed to spend perfectly good money on another extraneous publication. How many scholarships would “The Yard” (even the name is dumb) consume?

Now Zach Seward in the Wall Street Journal has answered my question. In an article titled “Colleges Want More Rah, Rah from Magazines,” Seward reports that colleges across the country are getting cranky about the actual reporting done by their alumni magazines, and that Harvard has grown so disaffected with Harvard Magazine that it has created that fine publication, “The Yard.”

Seward writes,

Harvard Magazine has covered Mr. Summers’s downfall as aggressively as any media outlet, [blogger’s lament: Hello, Zach?] opening its letters section to furious alumni and offering frank news reports on the campus row. But now university administrators, worried that the bimonthly magazine has gone over the line, have launched a new glossy publication to refocus their message to alumni. The new magazine’s second issue was distributed last month, and it contains scant mention of Mr. Summers’s troubles, his resignation or the crisis that has enveloped the university.

I may be old-fashioned, but still, it’s useful to point out that Harvard’s motto is Latin for truth. Harvard Magazine has done an excellent job of covering the Summers controversies thoroughly but fairly. Its presentation has been balanced and non-partisan. Isn’t that what Harvard alumni want? This is, after all, a pretty intelligent group.

And Seward doesn’t even get into the enormous pressures that editor John Rosenberg has faced in the Summers era: the way that Summers forced him to include a monthly “letter from the president,” even though Summers “wrote” it once, then abandoned the project; the way that Summers threatened to cut off the magazine’s use of the Harvard name and access to the alumni database. (Or so I’m told, though not by Rosenberg.) Yet you’d never get a glimpse of this behind-the-scenes pressure in the editorial tone of the magazine, which is truly a testament to its editor.

In its attack on its alumni magazine, Harvard aligns itself with other universities which have gone down the same road, such as Notre Dame and Baylor—both of which were driven by their adherence to religious dogma. Is this really a club Harvard wants to be a part of?

Well, apparently yes. Because Harvard’s motivation is its allegiance to the god of money.

At Harvard, Seward writes, leading fund-raisers determined that Harvard Magazine was no longer serving their best interests, according to two individuals in the development office.

You know, when “leading fundraisers” are deciding that a magazine’s quest to report the truth is not in the university’s best interests, that university has truly lost its way.

Seward continues: Sarah Friedell, a spokeswoman for Harvard, says The Yard was launched “to increase efficiencies,” replacing three other publications.

About which one must say two things.

First, anytime someone says something as awkward and artificial as “increase efficiencies,” you know they’re full of it. Second, just how many spokespeople does Harvard have? There’s an easy answer: Too many.

“The Yard” is an accurate reflection of how Harvard’s approach to journalists and truth grew particularly calculated, cynical and political during the Summers’ era.

In the Globe, Marcella Bombardieri scoops the Times—trust me on this one—and reports on those rumors about the return of Cornel West that we’ve all been hearing for months.

Bombardieri writes, accurately, that…

Perhaps no other event at Harvard could serve as a greater symbolic rebuke of Summers than a decision to rehire West, a scholar of religion and political philosophy. Summers’s dispute with West in 2001 produced the first major controversy of his presidency, giving him a reputation among campus critics as a bully whose approach to leadership favored attack over persuasion. Conversely, his champions saw it as evidence of a refreshing boldness lacking among most college presidents.

And as I reported in Harvard Rules, Summers later tried to spread the bogus rumor that the foundation of his disagreement with West stemmed from the fact that West had “a sexual harassment problem’—a story that you’ll never see in the New York Times, because Summers was smart enough to tell it to the New York Times, at an off-the-record meeting with the editorial board.

Another reason is that the charge is just so ugly, some people simply choose not to believe it, even though it’s not hard to confirm and has never been denied by Summers or anyone associated with him. Bombardieri doesn’t mention it, though she surely knows of it….

In any case, Skip Gates’ desire to bring West back—and, from what I hear, West’s understandable desire to return, thus truly sticking it to Larry Summers—put Derek Bok and Jeremy Knowles in an uncomfortable position. Bring West back, and you get racist conservatives and crotchety alumni up in arms. Reject the effort, and you have liberals and black professors mad at you.

My guess? Bok and Knowles would rather piss off conservatives than liberals and members of their own faculty….

The Yankees play the Red Sox at the Stadium tonight, Mike Mussina vs. Josh Beckett (fantastic!) and even though the season’s only one-third over, already these games feel important. The two teams are, as usual, at the top of their division, with the Sox up by half a game. (Yesterday, they were down by half a game.) Both teams showed their quality by whupping the Detroit Tigers, who have the best record in the majors but lost five of seven in consecutive series to the Yankees and Tigers. (It would have been six of seven, were it not for an injured Mariano Rivera.)

You have to give the Sox a slight edge at this point, if only because the Yankees are so beaten up: Hideki Matsui, out with a broken wrist; Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi, wiped out by a nasty flu; Derek Jeter, hit by a pitch on the thumb; Gary Sheffield, out with who-knows-what’s-wrong with his wrist; Bubba Crosby out with a bum hamstring; and so on. At this point in the Yankee season, who’d have thought that Melky Cabrera and Andy Phillips would be so important to the team?

I recently read Buzz Bissinger’s book about Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa, Three Nights in August. It’s a terrific book, but there’s one point on which Bissinger reaches too far—his claim that the Cubs-Cardinals rivalry is a vastly better one than the Sox-Yankees one. Bissinger calls the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry “a tabloid-fueled soap opera about money and ego and soundbites….a pair of high-priced supermodels trying to trip each other in their stilettos in the runway.”

That’s nonsense. It’s eloquent, but it’s nonsense. Even in early June, the Yankees playing the Red Sox, with first place to the winner—that’s what baseball is about.

I can’t wait…..